The American Nightmare

       In 1990, a dream driven couple took a sketch of a restaurant which had faith and ambition embedded into every line and stroke of its structure, and they breathed life into it. The curls of their breath could be the seen in the curls of the custom made iron sign swinging above their door. This hole in the wall restaurant in a Manhattan neighborhood is a refuge in the storm for many New Yorkers, including me, who need to drown their unsentimental, sharp and too confident New York spirits; even if it's for a short while.
I go there for peace: nothing more and nothing less. It is where my depletion of stress starts and where caramel colored coffee coaxes creativity out of its den. It is where I transcend into someone who is no longer suffocating in New York. They say that New York is where everyone experiences the great American dream, but I can honestly say, as a person in flesh seeing, feeling and experiencing New York every day, I have only witnessed the American nightmare. I am trapped in the city of dreams among buildings that suffocate the sun, and my only refuge is this hole in the wall restaurant.
          Why? Why this place of all places for me to be in New York City? Because, it is the only place where I have stone carved proof of this American dream. You see, I met that couple from 1990, and they have the American dream right in the palm of their hands. I look at them through the curly steam of my coffee and I see something that has a striking resemblance to fulfillment in their eyes. One look at them, and I am somehow gifted with a package of hope telling me that I have dreams that are worth a couple of nightmares.